Chapter 2 #3
“Stay there,” she says, fixing me with a hard stare, daring me to run out of here.
And that’s when she moves—snapping out of it.
She turns, yanking open a cabinet. She rummages around inside, and a moment later, she produces another tarot deck.
She shuffles through them without looking until one leaps out, landing on the floor with a soft smack.
She crouches and grabs it, smirking to herself when she picks it up.
The King of Swords.
The same card, from a different deck, is lying in front of the guy’s dead body, accompanied by Death and Justice.
Willow crosses to the table, and I watch in morbid fascination as she dips the tip of her index finger in the pool of blood. And I realize exactly what this is when I watch her draw an X over the card in the man’s own blood: a trophy.
Only one kind of killer bothers to take or make a trophy. A fucking serial killer.
I’m standing here absolutely frozen by morbid fascination as I watch her return with the card and the rest of the deck to the cabinet. She tucks them away and then pulls out a brand-new tarp, still neatly folded in its packaging.
My eyebrows lift. She was prepared. I mean, damn, she has a murder tarp. Not a random bedsheet or a tablecloth, this isn’t a panic move. A designated tarp, new and ready in her cabinet, like she was expecting company tonight.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Willow has most definitely done this before.
The tarp snaps open with a practiced flick, edges unfolding in a neat square across the floor.
She steps to her victim’s side, but in avoiding walking over the tarp, her hip catches the edge of the table just barely, rattling it.
Instantly, the dead guy slumps sideways, and neither of us moves fast enough.
The bastard drops to the ground and hits the tile with a sharp thud.
I cringe, praying he doesn’t start bleeding all over the floor.
That will make clean-up so much more complicated.
Willow rounds to the body and squats. She glances at me, face pale but sharp. Gone is the frozen woman of a few moments ago. “If you’re going to be here where you don’t belong, don’t just stand there like some kind of murder voyeur.”
Holy shit. Why do her sharp words make my dick twitch even more?
I knock out of my own freeze and crouch, my hands hooking under his armpits. Willow grabs his ankles, and we lift. Shuffling sideways, every step of it awkward, we cross onto the tarp. The plastic crinkles as we drop the dead weight onto it, the sound loud and obscene.
Willow doesn’t flinch.
Next, she pulls out some rags, the kind you use once and then throw away. She also comes out with a bottle of cleaner, the serious kind. Damn. She’s good.
“Take care of the splatters on the floor,” she instructs as she heads for her blood-soaked table.
“Got any oxygenated bleach for the wood?” I suggest as I crouch and start cleaning. “Cut with water. Don’t use it straight, or it’ll discolor the wood. Might look suspicious.”
Her head snaps toward me, eyes narrowing. “Bleach on oak? I don’t think so. The stain’s dark. Hides everything. I just have to wipe it down.”
“Until someone gets curious,” I shoot back. I check the ingredients on the back of the bottle I’m holding. It is indeed the good stuff. I go to spray the tabletop when Willow throws a hand out, stopping me.
“No!” she says, glaring at me with actual annoyance. “You’ll fuck up the finish.”
Oh. She likes the blood stains.
She snatches a rag, scrubbing fast, precise. “Trust me—no one’s curious about a tarot shop. Who would ever ask to look under the tablecloth?”
“A forensics team?” I point out dubiously.
She shakes her head. “They’d never have a reason to come here.
” Now finished wiping up the blood, she absentmindedly tosses the blood-soaked rags onto the dead guy’s body.
She turns and grabs a velvet tablecloth from the shelf.
one I’ve seen dozens of times in her videos.
She spreads it over the table, and, indeed, no one would ever know.
I shouldn’t be impressed. I really shouldn’t. But damn, if it doesn’t light something hot and wrong inside me.
“Fine,” I mutter, crouching to the side of her, spraying an errant splatter of blood on the floor. I don’t just wipe back and forth. I wipe it up and off. “But vinegar for metal. Otherwise, the residue lingers.”
She shoots me a look like I just told her how to boil water. “I know how to clean steel.”
“Do you?” I glance at the daggers lying on a rag on the floor. “Because those don’t look polished enough to pass a forensic test.”
Her jaw tightens. “I never said I was finished cleaning them. You’re awfully sure of yourself for a stranger who just barged into my shop.”
“And you’re awfully defensive for someone who just nailed a guy’s hands to a table like it was amateur night at the Crucifixion Club.”
Her eyes narrow into accusatory slits. “Why are you good at this?”
“Do you want to interrogate the person trying to help you, or do you want to get away with murder tonight? Because time’s running out to do both,” I snap.
That shuts her up. For now.
In less than five minutes, I’m confident we’ve gotten every speck of blood cleaned up. I have to give it to her; she’s efficient. If she’s going to spill any blood, she’s at least kept it to a manageable amount. Suffocation is a nice, clean touch.
With every bit of evidence wiped and cleaned up, Willow wraps the body and all the cleanup supplies in the tarp.
She snaps her fingers at me, pointing to a roll of duct tape in the cabinet.
I grab it and hand it over. It’s the good stuff, the kind you could fix a sinking ship with.
And I can’t help but watch in admiration as Willow expertly seals the guy up inside.
There isn’t a prayer of even one drop of blood escaping once she’s done.
That murder tarp burrito? It’s seriously secure.
But the body’s still here, the worst evidence of all.
“All right, you know what you’re doing,” I say, voice clipped. “What are you doing with this asshole?”
She swallows, and I see her hesitation. She doesn’t want to keep giving me details, digging her own grave deeper and deeper. But I’m here. I’ve seen it all. So, she presses on. “My truck. Out back.”
I simply nod and crouch, gripping the edge of the tarp, and haul.
Her eyes track me the whole way as I drag the wrapped body toward the back door, plastic crunching against the wood floor. She’s watching how easily I do it. Watching the practice in it.
And I can feel the questions piling up behind her lips like IEDs waiting to go off.
I back into the door, pushing it open with my ass, and let the night air wash over us. The neon glow from the Strip cuts across the alley, painting the tarp bundle in jagged pinks and blues.
Her truck waits, dark and hulking.
I adjust my grip, bending him into a kind of sitting position, and then dead heft the burrito. The crinkle of the tarp scrapes my side as I lift and carry. Damn, this asshole is heavy when you have to lift him up and into a truck bed.
The tarp bundle lands in the truck bed with a heavy thud, rattling the metal. I grunt, wiping the sweat off my brow, tugging my shirt back down—
Oh, fuck.
Willow’s eyes are wide, locked—not on the body, not on the blood—but on me. On the strip of skin I just flashed, the ink etched into it: a four-leaf clover.
Her voice cracks the silence like glass. “You’re… Holy shit. You’re Saint Shade.”
It’s not a question. It’s a revelation.
Every hair on my body stands on end. My blood goes cold. For a second, I swear I stop breathing.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Oh, fuck.
The name hangs between us, heavier than the corpse I just hauled.
Saint Shade. My empire. My mask. My entire life’s work.
Exposed in a back alley by a woman dressed as a cat who just murdered a man.
My stomach drops, like I just missed a trapeze bar and there’s nothing but air beneath me.
I want to deny it, laugh it off, play dumb—but the way she’s staring, I know there’s no use.
She’s seen the tattoo a hundred times online, thirsting over it in my videos.
It’s literally the only tattoo I have on my body, and I don’t shy away from exposing my flesh on camera. It’s as damning as it could get.
My chest pounds. If she speaks a word of this—if she posts one hint, one card, one wink about what she just saw—it’s over. I curse under my breath, dragging a hand down my face.
She takes a step toward me, eyes still wide, voice rising with disbelief and hysteria. “You’re him. Holy shit. You’re him.”
She looks half terrified, half like she just discovered Elvis is alive and stripping in her living room.
And me? I feel the walls closing in.
My double life just detonated.